GOP hardliners revolt as Johnson faces headache over push to allow new parents to vote remotely

(CNN) — A fight is breaking out among House Republicans over whether to allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely — a politically explosive issue that is gaining traction in the chamber at a critical time for Speaker Mike Johnson.

A group of GOP hardliners from the House Freedom Caucus staged a short-lived rebellion Tuesday on the House floor, holding up an unrelated vote as they demanded concessions from party leadership over a proxy voting measure for new parents that will soon come to the floor for a vote, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

Among the demands, according to two people familiar with the matter, was for party leaders to raise the threshold for future discharge petitions to two-thirds of the House, making them harder to greenlight – an ask that GOP leaders haven’t yet ruled out.

The divide over proxy voting is playing out not just within the House GOP conference, but within the House Freedom Caucus itself. The chief Republican sponsor of the proxy voting proposal is Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who is one of the only women members of the Freedom Caucus.

Multiple House Freedom Caucus members refused to support the procedural vote on the floor because they wanted party leaders to block the push to allow proxy voting for new parents, according to three people familiar with the discussions. After the vote initially appeared to be at risk of failing, enough GOP members ultimately backed the unrelated measure for the vote to succeed, though it was not clear what agreement was made, if any.

It’s also not clear whether the Freedom Caucus’ proposal to change the House GOP rules on discharge petitions would have the votes. It would also be highly unusual to change the rules mid-year.

But the moment foreshadows an ugly floor fight to come, as the House is expected to take up the resolution from Luna and Colorado Democratic Rep. Brittany Pettersen as early as next week. The congresswoman is forcing the vote using a relatively uncommon method known as a discharge petition, which allows rank-and-file lawmakers to force their own measures to the floor if they can get 217 other members to support it. The maneuver rarely ever succeeds, so the fact that it has crossed the critical threshold is notable – and a sign of bipartisan support for the push – but is seen as going against GOP party’s leadership.

“We have concerns about anything that would bring proxy voting into the House,” Rep. Andy Harris, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus, told reporters.

The move underscores the immense power that any single lawmaker has on matters coming to the floor in one of the smallest House majorities in history. Just a handful of GOP hardliners were able to derail party leaders’ plans to pass a routine rule on the floor and force them into a discussion about their own demands. And Johnson is confronting these minuscule margins at a high-stakes moment for the House GOP and for President Donald Trump, as the party intends to muscle through the White House’s agenda in the coming months.

The issue of proxy voting — while a procedural one — is a high-intensity battle among the many institutionalists in the House, including in the Freedom Caucus. While many Republicans, including Johnson himself, repeatedly voted by proxy during the pandemic, many of them have argued in floor speeches and in court proceedings that it is an unconstitutional practice.

“Look, I’m a father. I’m pro-family,” Johnson told reporters Tuesday morning. “The proxy voting, in my view, is unconstitutional,” he said, arguing that it could lead to a slippery slope in which members are “all voting remotely, by AI or something.”

In a closed-door meeting with his conference on Tuesday morning, Johnson made clear he is firmly opposed to the resolution. At least one GOP member interpreted his remarks to mean that he would strongly whip his members to oppose the resolution.

It’s not clear whether Johnson will win the fight.

Luna has convinced 11 other Republicans to back the discharge petition, in a rare challenge of party leadership. And at least two additional GOP lawmakers are expected to support the measure on the floor, Reps. Jeff Van Drew and Tim Burchett, according to people familiar with their thinking. Those votes — as well as the full Democratic caucus – would be enough to change the House rules in a dramatic override of Johnson’s authority.

And Luna herself is going after Johnson, calling him out for his own votes that he cast remotely, before he argued it was unconstitutional.

“Speaker Johnson is a kind man and his heart is in the right spot but he’s wrong on proxy voting for new parents,” she wrote on X. “Here are some documents showing him voting by proxy in the 117th Congress, as late as December 2022! He argues it’s ‘unconstitutional’ but has done it several times,” she said, posting images of at least three instances in which he voted by proxy in 2022.

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